DOWN DEVON LANES
Photograph by A. W. Cutler
IOG ADDS TO THIE MYSTERY OF GRIM MOORS
On this gray morning at Combe Martin, in north Devonshire, the boys must be real
devotees of the favorite English sport of walking to pass the gate and go for a ramble across
the countryside.
to each other, thereby stirring our easy
mirth, but no one says anything of that
sort in England. If anyone other than an
American were to toodle-oo in public, some
one would write to the Times about it.
After a while I developed a theory to
account for the impersonality with which
the dealers told these stories. They regret,
but do not mourn. The man by the road
has become cynical. If another great house
has fallen-well, great houses are always
falling.
It is the men who have done things who
are remembered in Devon, not merely
those who bore great names.
DEVON'S EVENTFUL PAST
For Devon is soaked in English history.
On its moors are traces of a people who
lived during the Ice Age somewhat less
comfortably than did Eskimos 200 years
ago. Iberians came and were trampled
under by the Celts, and Saxon thanes took
over and later knuckled under to the Nor
mans. The French burned Devon's towns,
Spaniards raided its coasts, and Danes
ravaged its villages. Devon's men played
their parts in England's civil wars. The
sturdiest seafarers sailed from Devon's
coasts. Her golden age was the golden
age of England. Elizabeth said of her
men: "All born courtiers with a becoming
confidence."
William of Orange was welcomed at
Brixham Quay, and the tiny cottage in
which he held his first assembly may still
be seen in a lane at Stoke Gabriel. Gen
eral Monk was a Devonshire man and
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